Netograf.ro is a new application for testing internet speed in Romania, it being launched by ANCOM, the National Authority for Communications Administration and Regulation, for Romanians subscribed to various mobile phone services. application Netograf.ro was launched within Internet & Mobile World 2014 and we are not talking about any application that you can install on your iPhone or iPad, but about a website designed to test your internet speed.
I know most of you use Speedtest for this, but Netograf.ro aims to do things a little differently, asking you for data about your connection type in order to provide you with the most accurate information. You can find additional details about netograf.ro in the press release below, and to test the internet speed you will need to access the Netograf.ro website in the browser of your mobile terminal or PC, no matter what type it is.
From the first tests done by me, the application needs a lot of work to be more user-friendly and the most interesting part is that it offered me higher Internet browsing speeds than those specified in the contract, at least in the case of RDS .
Netograf.ro – the new application for testing internet speed in Romania
08.10.2014
The National Authority for Communications Administration and Regulation (ANCOM) presented today, during the Internet & Mobile World 2014 fair, Netograf.ro, an application for testing and monitoring the quality of internet service by Romanian subscribers. Users will be able to measure data transfer speed, transfer delay, transfer delay variation and packet loss rate in relation to those offered by the provider. The application has been opened to the public for testing, being in the stage where it is populated with the Internet offers of Internet access service providers.
"The Netograf.ro application was designed by ANCOM to offer Internet users in Romania an independent, objective and free tool to permanently check the quality of the Internet service they pay for. They will be able to ascertain not only whether the internet service they have lives up to the promised quality, but also compare the parameters recorded with those obtained by subscribers of other providers", said Cătălin Marinescu, president of ANCOM.Netograf.ro tests the quality of the connection between the end user's terminal equipment and a test server located in an internet interexchange node. In order to test these parameters, the user must select the provider, the type of offer they benefit from and the type of connection. Authorized internet access service providers are required to enter their technical data of active commercial offers into the application via a web interface.The application also differs from other tools of the same type in that, based on user tests and entered offers, it will also calculate the average values of the technical quality parameters offered by a given supplier. For example, regarding the speed of the Internet service, the application will calculate the national average value registered by each provider or the average value per locality. Through this additional information, users will also be able to evaluate the performance of the network, as it was experienced by other users. Given that the statistical values will result from end-user tests, these statistics will be relevant once a sufficient number of tests have been recorded in the application database. To avoid statistical errors, if the user chooses a provider other than the one pre-selected by the application, the measurement result will not be included in the statistics.The application, which currently has in its database the offers of some of the main operators on the market, will be permanently updated, each authorized operator having the obligation to enter its own information regarding the quality parameters of the commercialized connections, according to the provisions of ANCOM decision no. 1201/2011. The provisions of the decision apply to internet access services, provided through public fixed or mobile electronic communications networks, regardless of the internet access technology used.The test result can be influenced by a number of factors, so that, in order to obtain the most correct results, before starting the test, users must make sure that no other users are using the Internet connection at the same time, that the terminal equipment is sufficiently powerful so as to allow reaching the speeds promised by the providers, that they are positioned near the router if they are using a wireless device, or that no other applications are active that can alter the test result. In the case of electronic communications services at mobile points, users must ensure that they are using the best technology available at the time of the test, know whether the service has a traffic volume included, after the exhaustion of which the transfer speed drops to a certain threshold, or to ensure that they have enough traffic included so that running the test does not generate unwanted additional costs.The application for testing the quality parameters of the internet access service is one of the measures taken by ANCOM to facilitate the access of users of internet access services to comparable, adequate and updated information, along with the imposition of the obligation of providers to include the measured parameters in contracts through Netograf.ro and to publish a series of other administrative parameters on its own internet pages.Using Netograf.ro, ANCOM can take a proactive approach in terms of identifying possible degradations of the internet access service. By comparing the offers of internet access service providers, as well as the evolution over time of the service quality parameters, ANCOM can carry out studies and reports on the quality of the internet access service and can assess the need to intervene in the market through other measures of regulation.
